What would happen if 20 million illegals left the US?

This is a discussion on What would happen if 20 million illegals left the US? within the Off Topic & Humor Discussion forums, part of the The Back Porch category; I, Tina Griego, journalist for the Denver Rocky Mountain News wrote a column titled, 'Mexican Visitor's Lament' -- 10/25/07.
I interviewed Mexican journalist Evangelina Hernandez ...

Hernandez said, 'They (illegal aliens) pay rent, buy groceries, buy clothes... What Happens to your country's economy if 20 million people go away?' Hummm, I thought, what would happen, so I did my due diligence, buried my nose as a reporter into the FACTS I found below.

It's a good question - it deserves an honest answer. Over 80% of Americans demand secured borders and illegal migration stopped. But what would happen if all 20 million or more vacated America ?

The answers I found may surprise you!

In California, if 3.5 million illegal aliens moved back to Mexico, it would leave an extra $10.2 billion to spend on overloaded school systems, bankrupt hospitals and overrun prisons. It would leave highways cleaner, safer and less congested. Everyone could understand one another as English became the dominant language again.

Colorado would save more than $20 million in prison costs, and the terror that those 7,300 alien criminals set upon local citizens. Denver Officer Don Young and hundreds of Colorado victims would not have suffered death, accidents, rapes and other crimes by illegals.

Denver Public Schools would not suffer a 67 percent drop-out/flunk-out rate because of thousands of illegal alien students speaking 41 different languages. At least 200,000 vehicles would vanish from our gridlocked cities in Colorado. Denver's 4% unemployment rate would vanish as our working poor would gain jobs at a living wage.

In Florida, 1.5 million illegals would return the Sunshine State back to America, the rule of law, and English.

In Chicago, Illinois, 2.1 million illegals would free up hospitals, schools, prisons and highways for a safer, cleaner and more crime-free experience.

If 20 million illegal aliens returned 'home' --

If 20 million illegal aliens returned 'home', the U.S. Economy would return to the rule of law. Employers would hire legal American citizens at a living wage. Everyone would pay their fair share of taxes because they wouldn't be working off the books. That would result in an additional $401 Billion in IRS income taxes collected annually, and an equal amount for local, state and city coffers.

No more push '1' for Spanish or '2' for English. No more confusion in American schools that now must contend with over 100 languages that degrade the educational system for American kids. Our over-crowded schools would lose more than two million illegal alien kids at a cost of billions in ESL and free breakfasts and lunches.

We would lose 500,000 illegal criminal alien inmates at a cost of more than $1.6 billion annually. That includes 15,000 MS-13 gang members who distribute $130 billion in drugs annually would vacate our country.

In cities like L.A., 20,000 members of the '18th Street Gang' would vanish from our nation. No more Mexican forgery gangs for ID theft from Americans! No more foreign rapists and child molesters!

Losing more than 20 million people would clear up our crowded highways and gridlock. Cleaner air and less drinking and driving American deaths by illegal aliens!

America's economy is drained. Taxpayers are harmed. Employers get rich. Over $80 billion annually wouldn't return to the aliens' home countries by cash transfers. Illegal migrants earned half that money untaxed, which further drains America 's economy - which currently suffers an $8.7 trillion debt.

At least 400,000 anchor babies would not be born in our country, costing us $109 billion per year per cycle. At least 86 hospitals in California, Georgia, and Florida would still be operating instead of being bankrupt out of existence because illegals pay nothing via the EMTOLA Act.

Americans wouldn't suffer thousands of TB and hepatitis cases rampant in our country-brought in by illegals unscreened at our borders.

Our cities would see 20 million less people driving, polluting and grid locking our cities. It would also put the 'progressives' on the horns of a dilemma; illegal aliens and their families cause 11 percent of our greenhouse gases.

Over one million of Mexico 's poorest citizens now live inside and along our border from Brownsville, Texas to San Diego, California in what the New York Times called, 'colonias' or new neighborhoods. Trouble is, those living areas resemble Bombay and Calcutta where grinding poverty, filth, diseases, drugs, crimes, no sanitation and worse. They live without sewage, clean water, streets, electricity, roads or any kind of sanitation.

The New York Times reported them to be America 's new 'Third World' inside our own country. Within 20 years, at their current growth rate, they expect 20 million residents of those colonias.

(I've seen them personally in Texas and Arizona; it's sickening beyond anything you can imagine.)

By enforcing our laws, we could repatriate them back to Mexico. We should invite 20 million aliens to go home, fix their own countries and/or make a better life in Mexico . We already invite a million people into our country legally more than all other countries combined annually. We cannot and must not allow anarchy at our borders, more anarchy within our borders and growing lawlessness at every level in our nation. It's time to stand up for our country, our culture, our civilization and our way of life.

Interesting Statistics!

Here are 14 reasons illegal aliens should vacate America, and I hope they are forwarded over and over again until they are read so many times that the reader gets sick of reading them:

1. $14 billion to $22 billion dollars are spent each year on welfare to illegal aliens.

10. The illegal aliens in the United States have a crime rate that's two and a half times that of white non-illegal aliens. In particular, their children, are going to make a huge additional crime problem in the US . - http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIP...12/ldt.01.html

11. During the year 2005, there were 8 to 10 MILLION illegal aliens that crossed our southern border with as many as 19,500 illegal aliens from other terrorist countries. Over 10,000 of those were middle-eastern terrorists. Millions of pounds of drugs, cocaine, meth, heroine, crack, Guns, and marijuana crossed into the U.S. from the southern border. http://************/t9sht

12.. The National Policy Institute, estimates that the total cost of mass deportation would be between $206 and $230 billion, or an average cost of between $41 and $46 billion annually over a five year period. - http://www.nationalpolicyinstitute.....?b=deportation

13. In 2006, illegal aliens sent home $65 BILLION in remittances back to their countries of origin, to their families & friends . Wooldridge - How Much Further Into This Nightmare? (Please note that when this happens, that money does not have the multiplier effect of continuing in our economy and multiplying throughout our economy. When money stays inside our economy, those that receive the money then spend that money on their needs and wants here in our economy. And then those that receive that money spend that money on their needs and wants here in our economy. And so on and so on. All of these foreign remittances are a huge drain on our economy because the money leaves our economy and thus stops multiplying its effect throughout our economy.) (The multiplier effect of a dollar in the private sector of the US economy is believed to be somewhere between 6 and 9 depending on the economist you talk to. The multiplier effect of a dollar within the public sector is much lower.)

14. The dark side of illegal immigration: Nearly one million sex crimes are committed by illegal immigrants in the United States !' http://www.drdsk.com/articleshtml

Total cost a whopping $538.3 BILLION DOLLARS A YEAR!!!
From Another site!

"To my mind it is wholly irresponsible to go into the world incapable of preventing violence, injury, crime, and death. How feeble is the mindset to accept defenselessness. How unnatural. How cheap. How cowardly. How pathetic." Ted Nugent

at the risk of being terminally unpopular, I would like to see the serious, big-picture, big-impact, actual business studies that address this issue. Not being funny, not doing the study with the purpose of either advocating or demonizing the idea of deportation. Just, plain, numbers, on what the real impact on legal US residents would be if all non-legal US residents were to return to their homelands.

For example, the 14 point checklist above assumes that deporting everyone will make every employer then automatically revert to employing legal US residents "at living wage" for the jobs freed by those deported. In reality, I think what would happen is those businesses built on a framework that relies on poorly paid, tax-free, un-insured labor forces would either a) immediately fold and close their doors or b) immediately jack up all their prices to adjust for the labor crisis and either survive or eventually fold based upon their success pursuing a Washington Lobby directed at changing labor laws in the US to enable them to pay less than "a living wage" to stay in business. The impact on legal US residents of all stripes would be quite large, and quite probably negative. Think: minimum wage starts taking a downturn and instead of being incremented up every once in a while to account for inflation, we instead have to increment down to account for deflation. Instead of getting a huge increase in wages paid to US residents where that money was being paid instead to illegal aliens, we might see a huge decrease in wages paid to all US residents, in all industries, all business sectors, all areas whether they were impacted in a meaningful way by the "illegal issue" prior to the deportation or not.

Thinking about it from a purely business perspective, and in terms of a single industry: Restaurants would lose arguably 30-50% of their staffs in one go. If required by law to legally hire replacement staffs under terms already defined by US law which cover what a minimum wage is, how many
hours constitutes a binding contract for that employer to provide health benefits, etc etc etc ad infinitum... my guess is, those restaurants previously willing/able to hire staffs illegally in an effort to make bottom line and/or some profit, won't be able to do so anymore. They close. Meaning, no, we didn't just gain 30-50% of "living wage" restaurant jobs back for legal residents. It means we just lost 50-70% of "living wage" restaurant jobs from previously employed legal residents. Previously employed, unskilled labor legal residents who can't fold themselves into a technology corridor type workforce just because they must. If they are to be employed, they must retrain. What would it cost taxpayers to retrain all those displaced restaurant workers?

ok, so truth: maybe half their earnings are sent back to their homelands for families left behind. Corresponding truth: that means half stays. They go home, we lose all that multiplying economy effect. So, does every deportee equal: half their admittedly sub-par income (if they stay) or exactly none of their admittedly sub-par income (if they go). Seeing actual hard numbers that compares what they cost us in dollars to be here (as seen in the op) and what they actually bring us in dollars from being here (evaluated fairly, as only the part of that income which stays, not seen in the orig. post) would be interesting. Which half of their US income is more important to legal US residents: the half which doesn't currently multiply (the half sent home) or the half which does, currently, multiply?

I am not advocating evaluating the worth of an illegal resident of the US in terms of actual dollars. I'm just saying, having done that it would be more persuasive an argument if the argument captured the entirety of the issue.

I would be very interested to see the studies that would inevitably (in my ignorance I hope I am not being naive) have to cross the desks of the economists and regulators and politicians tasked with the job of deciding the issue/proposal) which would evaluate the real, immediate and long-term, impacts on the US economy if such a move were to be given legitimacy and be implemented. Wouldn't it just suck if then all the jobs that we managed to keep in the US when so many went to other countries, suddenly went to those other countries?

But who would spend a month or two picking blueberries in Maine? Those that live in Maine don't want to do the back breaking work even though good money can be made in that short period of time. They would rather stay on unemployment and food stamps than earn an honest buck.